Household and business appliances emit sporadic bursts of energy at various frequencies. These sporadic emissions are seen as noise to signals being transmitted by network devices. To combat the effects of such noise, some conventional communication systems add a “PHY Margin” to the data transmission rate/power requirements of the signals transmitted. Throughout this discussion, the term “data transmission rate” means the amount of useful information that can be transmitted from the transmitting device to the receiving device. For the purposes of this discussion, useful information does not include error correction bits. In one instance, the PHY Margin is an increase in the amount of power (and so signal to noise ratio) that would otherwise be required to transmit the same amount of information over the communication channel with a fixed error rate. Alternatively, the PHY Margin is provided by decrease in the data transmission rate. In Quadrature Amplitude Modulation (QAM) modulation scheme, a decrease in the data transmission rate means a decrease in the density of the symbol constellation (i.e., the number of unique states that can be represented by one QAM symbol). Thus, the addition of a PHY Margin increases the reliability with which information can be transmitted over the communication channel in the face of noise. Typically, these PHY Margins are added to every signal transmitted through the communication medium.
However, each network and environment is different. Some environments will be noisier than others. Some communication networks are more susceptible to noise than others. Nonetheless, conventional communication systems are not typically equipped to adapt to changes in noise conditions. Increasing the PHY Margin consistently in response to sporadic noise can cause a reduction in the data throughput (e.g., when the transmitter is at maximum transmission power, the only way to increase the PHY Margin is to reduce the data transmission rate, which in some instances includes providing a more robust error correction scheme).
Accordingly, it is desirable to develop a mechanism for communicating more efficiently in a sporadic noise environment.